Blog

Cameline Sauce, Three Ways

Introduction

Cameline sauces were popular throughout the 14th and 15th century, and were found in every French cookbook of the time. Cameline sauce could even be purchased from a saucemaker by those who did not care to make their own. Though these sauces shared a name, and a signature ingredient (cinnamon) they varied in many other ways. From a comparison of the various recipes, it is apparent that the flavor of the sauce varied both regionally and temporally.

These sauces were part of my 2007 Atlantian Pentathlon in Persona entry at the Kingdom Arts and Sciences Festival.

Original Recipes

Due to the number of recipes compared here, I include only the English translations of these recipes – the original French is available elsewhere.

“On veal and goat, cameline. Macerate bread in vinegar and wine, and ginger and cinnamon.” – Le Recueil de Riom (my own translation).

“For the salmon and for the trout, the cameline: to give understanding to the sauce-maker who will make it, take his white bread according to the quantity of it which he is making and let him put it to roast on the grill, and let him have good claret wine of the best which he can have in which he should put his bread to soak and vinegar in good measure; and let him take his spices, that is cinnamon, ginger, grains of paradise, cloves, a little pepper, mace, nutmeg and a little sugar, and this is mixed with is bread and a little salt; and then dress it as you will. – Du Fait du Cuisine

“Note that at Tournais, to make cameline, they grind together ginger, cinnamon and saffron and half a nutmeg: soak in wine, then take out of the mortar; then have white bread crumbs, not toasted, moistened with cold water and grind in the mortar, soak in wine and strain, then boil it all, and lastly add red sugar: and this is winter cameline. And in summer they make it the same way, but it is not boiled.” – Le Menagier de Paris

“To make Cameline Sauce. Grind ginger, a great deal of cinnamon, cloves, grains of paradise, mace and, if you wish, long pepper; strain bread that has been moistened in vinegar, strain everything together and salt as necessary.” Le Viander de Taillevent.

Discussion

Looking at the above recipes, the recipes all sound very similar – the basic procedure is to take cinnamon and other spices, grind with bread and mix with a flavorful, grape-based liquid. However, the differences become more obvious when charted:

Recueil

Chiquart

Menagier

Menagier 2

Vivendier

Taillevent

Cinnamon

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

Ginger

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

Nutmeg

no

yes

yes

yes

no

no

Mace

no

yes

no

no

no

yes

Pepper

no

yes

no

no

no

no

Long Pepper

no

no

no

no

no

yes

Grains of Paradise

no

yes

no

no

yes

yes

Cloves

no

yes

no

no

yes

yes

Saffron

no

no

yes

yes

no

no

Sugar

no

yes

yes

yes

no

no

Salt

no

yes

no

no

no

yes

Bread

unspecified

“roasted”

“white”

“white”

“darkly toasted”

unspecified

Liquid 1

vinegar

wine

wine

wine

verjuice

vinegar

Liquid 2

wine

vinegar

water

water

wine

Liquid 3

vinegar

Boiled

unspecified

unspecified

yes

no

no

no

As shown, different cameline sauces can vary wildly. I have chosen to redact the first three recipes (Recueil, Chiquart, and Le Menagier), as they show the most variation between versions. These three redactions vary tremendously in their proportions, yet they all make cameline sauce.

This sauce would have been eaten with a variety of dishes, including roast or boiled vension, roast piglet, veal, kid, lamb or mutton, and a variety of fish. This pairing was based on both medieval food preferences and humoral theory.

One key to bread thickened sauces such as these is proper straining – using a fine wire mesh strainer and forcing the bread puree through the strainer removes any graininess that might appear in the sauce.

Redaction – Cameline from Le Menagier

Ingredients

2 slices white bread, crusts removed

5 tsp cinnamon (ground)

2 tsp ginger (ground)

1 tsp saffron

3 tsp sugar

1½ cups red wine (Pinot Noir)

Procedure

Grind saffron, mix spices and ½ cup wine in small saucepan. Soak bread in remaining wine, force through strainer into saucepan. Mix, then heat gently until thickened. DO NOT boil, or allow to heat rapidly – if sauce overheats, sauce will attain the texture of glue. Remove from heat just before sauce reaches desired thickness, add sugar.